News and general opinion, often privacy, security or computer related, but could be about anything really, including religion, politics, the environment, business or audio books. "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence." -- Napoleon Bonaparte

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Microsoft Access97 works fine on Vista, once you can get it to install. My original install CD is the SR-1 version, and I was alarmed to discover that the SR-2 patch doesn't work on Vista, because Vista's new security model prvents the patch from updating the program files. How do I install the Access 97 SR-2 patch? Fortunately there is a workaround.I used my old testing laptop and created a WinXP install, and then installed Access97, the ODE Tools, the print relationships wizard, and the service packs for both ODE and SR-2. Then I backed up the files onto an external drive. The folder I used for Access97 was c:\Program Files\Office97 so that these files don't get mixed up with newer versions of office.Next, I created an install script using Inno Setup, based on the log file created by the SR-2 patch program. After creating and running the setup program, my copy of Access97 reports that it is indeed version SR-2, as shown in the screen shot above.If you want to use this patch, then you must have done the following:Delete the HATTEN.TTF (Haettenschweiler) font, and then install Access97 SR-1. I have not tested the install with a pre-SR1 version. Run Access97 SR-1 as administrator (just right click on the shortcut and select "Run as administrator") to ensure that Access has correctly set up all its registry entries.Only once you have completed these steps is it okay to download and run my Access97SR2Setup.exe file (25MB). Alternatively, you can download the Access97sr2.zip file which contains a copy of the Inno Setup script file. Don't be confused: you can't use this script to actually install Access97 without an original Access97 or Office97 CD, because the script only updates existing files. If you want to install the Acces97 Runtime tester, then follow the link. The runtime version only allows you to run Access programs, not edit Access databases. Also, my installer does not patch Word, Excel, etc.Update: after installing the patch I have stopped getting a weird compile error when creating MDE files. I guess it was fixed by one of the SR-2 updates or the ODE service pack fix.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

I'm a font junkie. I collect fonts, but that doesn't mean I'm prepared to put up with my Word font menu looking like a Christmas tree. I noticed that my Vista machine has several hundred MB of fonts that I either don't like or just find annoying. There is a complete list at the end of this post. It includes all the fonts I managed to remove.In theory it should be simple: if you don't like a font, just go to the fonts list and delete it, right? Wrong. Vista protects some humungous fonts from being deleted, but usually those are the fonts that look the same as half a dozen other fonts. So I tried a small experiment: boot the PC using a WinXP/BartPE disk, and move all those font files to another folder. It's a bit risky because some of the fonts used by the system got removed in the process, and Outlook 2007 and a Truecrypt dialog with checkboxes looked weird. A bit of experimentation later and I had everything working correctly, but fewer fonts on the fonts menu.You may not have all these fonts on your machine: my laptop came preinstalled with 269MB of fonts, including Office 2007, and then I installed Access 2002 and Access 97 as well, so if the fonts listed are missing from your machine, relax. The numbers after the file names give the font size in bytes, and as you can see some of them are huge. I have kept these fonts on a backup disk, so I can always put them back if a particular document or application needs them. And I'm glad to see the last of those fonts names beginning with an @ sign, which drove me nutty.Here are all the font files that are no longer in my Vista font folder:

Update: My fonts folder contains only 160 items and occupies 56.6MB of disk space, considerably less than the 269MB it was before. Following a tip from the first comment, I added "Arial Unicode" back, which gives me the "@Arial Unicode MS" font, plus several weird versions of Arial, Courier New, and Times New Roman. These fonts only appear in older applications, not in Word 2007, so I guess I'll put up with the 23MB font file and go with miltilingual compatability. I just hope Windows doesn't try to keep that font file loaded in RAM the whole time.Update 27th January 2009: I kept getting this setup error message when reinstalling Office 2007, or even just when loading Access 2007: Error 1907.Could not register font. It turns out that I should not have deleted CAMBRIA.TTC because Office 2007 Setup doesn't know how to put it back. Weird.

Run the program after you download it.The program will start listing activity on your computer. Stop this by clicking on the magnifying glass so there is a red X over it.You can also click on File --> Capture Events (Ctrl+E) to do the same thing.

Then click on the picture of a funnel, or filter.You can also click on Filter --> Filter (Ctrl+L) to do the same thing.

In the "Process Monitor Filter" screen, click on "Architecture" and change it to "Path".Click on "is" and change it to "begins with"

In the next field, an empty field, type the following:

C:\WINDOWS\FONTS\

Click the Add button.If you have done this correctly there will be a new entry below with a green checkmark that reads:Path begins with C:\WINDOWS\FONTS\ Include

Click OK.

Click on Filter --> Drop Filtered Events.

Now we are ready to find the fonts that are required by Office.Click on the magnifying glass so the red X goes away.You can also click on File --> Capture Events (Ctrl+E) to do the same thing.

Now try to launch your Office Application again. When you get to the error, look near the last line in the Process Monitor list. It will list the last font that Office tried to access. You will have to replace or repair this font.

You can repair Windows system fonts using the SFC tool:sfc /scannowThen you have to change the rights on c:\windows\logs\cbs\cbs.log to allow you to read the log and find out which fonts were damaged.

When we bought our HP Laserjet 1020, Windows Vista was in its advanced Beta stage. Nonetheless, when Vista came out and we bought Penny's HP Laptop with Vista Home Basic preinstalled, the driver was not ready.When the driver shipped in May last year, it was worse than the WinXP driver, putting black lines down the side of the page, on both WinXP and Vista. Needless to say I was not impressed. A year later the driver has not been updated.Yesterday I went to buy a replacement toner cartridge, and noticed that the Samsung ML-1640 printer cost less than the toner cartridge. So not only has HP lost out on the sale of a R750 toner cartridge for the 1020, it has also lost out on the sale of a R12000 laptop (I didn't even look at HP/Compaq laptops last month) and once the 1020 finally conks out we will probably replace it with a Samsung or Lexmark colour printer.All this because HP were too cheap to do a decent driver for the 1020. Not only does the Vista driver put lines down the side of the page whenever a graphic is printed, but the only way to print anything from another PC is to send it to the shared printer, and then reboot the host PC to get it to print. Not any more, since buying the ML-1640. HP knows how to annoy its customers, and it has done so really well.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

The power management system on my Acer is a bit dodgy, so I was delighted to find something that may just solve the issues I've been having. It certainly adds some useful options to help save battery life when the power is not plugged in, including turning off the Aero eye candy and the Vista Sidebar.It's called Vista Battery Saver and its a free, open source utility. It has been running on my laptop for a while now, and it has helped me get the power saving to work as I want it to.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

One of the criticized changes in Windows Vista compared to Windows XP, was that fact that the Disk Defragmenter allowed you only to defragment all your partitions at once and not separately. One of the changes introduced in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is allowing the users to select the partitions which they want to defragment. This is a very welcome change and it proves that Microsoft listened to the feedback received from their users.In this article the guys at Vista for Beginners will show you how to defragment only the partitions you want and how to schedule a defragmentation in Windows Vista Service Pack 1. More ...

Monday, November 03, 2008

I have been having fun with my new laptop and Windows Vista. Actually it doesn't suck too badly, except that the HP LaserJet 1020 support in Vista is badly broken, but I have written about it before. HP lost out on a laptop sale because of this problem, and will probably lose out on our next printer purchase as well.Today's WOW revelation (remember "The WOW Starts Now" slogan?) is that the trusted VB "Sendkeys" function has been disabled in Vista, breaking a gazillion VB6 programs, as well as some key (ahem) parts of Miami/Mustang. Fortunately I found a library written by Karl E Peterson that required only minor tweaking to get it to work in Access 97.In the process I discovered that the Access97 help function doesn't work in Vista until you install a help file program. That in turn required me to validate my copy of Windows again, which doesn't work properly in Firefox, so I had to go to the URL using IE7. What a mission!The dreaded UAC (User Annoyance Control) is a little more manageable if you use the Norton UAC program from Norton Labs.Update: Any Access97 developer who needs SendKeys and who does not have the time and/or energy to modify Karl Peterson's code, can email me for a modified copy: vmusic at spamcop dot net.